


Until there's nothing left

by kenkatsuki



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Mentions of Rape, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 23:49:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10524489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenkatsuki/pseuds/kenkatsuki
Summary: Feelings were uncontrollable things bent on leaving messes everywhere in its wake.He had learned to disconnect himself from his own body and mind, shoving every ugly little feeling stirring in the depths of his stomach deep.That's how he had survived.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so first off, this is pretty fucking angsty if you haven't already figured that out by the tags.  
> Also I'm just going to put up the warning that the self-harm at the end of the chapter is going into some ugly details, so for anyone not being comfortable with that I wouldn't recommend reading this.

Andrew refused to admit to possessing a feeling such as fear.

Fear was weakness.  
Fear was unreasonable.  
Fear was an invisible weight holding you down.  
Fear meant not having control over your own body and mind.  
Fear took you over as soon as you gave it the chance.  
Fear blurred your vision and clouded your mind.

He did not fear anything.  
He had stopped feeling a long time ago so why should fear be an exception?  
He had forcibly shut himself off any feelings that might make him weak.

Feelings were uncontrollable things, bent on leaving messes everywhere in its wake.  
He had learned to disconnect himself from his own body and mind, shoving every ugly little feeling stirring in the depths of his stomach deep.

That's how he had survived. 

It's how he could stand up day after day, despite how many times the world had thrown him to his knees.  
Despite how often staying down had seemed so tempting.  
It's how the inmovable apathy had developed.  
He had broken too many times by letting things in so he simply had learned to stop.  
By shutting off and removing himself from the presence he had stayed alive.

But at some point that just wasn't enough anymore.  
Livid pain was eating him from inside out. It was a numbing kind of pain, despite its unwielding ferocity. 

The numbness had spread over him and the pain had become a dull ever-present ache that was a little like breathing. How cruel. You were so accustomed to it you stopped conciously being aware of it. But when you focussed on it, it was impossible to ignore.  
He couldn't remember when the last time was where breathing hadn't been a chore.  
And when the irrevocable numbness had become too much too bear he had seeked out another kind of pain. A pain that could dull the numbness for a bit. A pain he chose himself, and wasn't put under by strong hands keeping him from defending himself.

A pain he could control.

The sting of a blade against pale white skin. Crimson-red blood welling up in a thin line. Round droplets of red removing themselves to trace a red thread down his arms, contrasting the stark brightness of his arms.

A second line above the first one.  
Another followed.  
And another.

It had become addictingly fascinating.

He felt himself letting out a choked sigh of relief that cleared his clocked lungs a little.  
It was as if some of the numbness was forced out of his skin through the red fluid.  
The pain was welcome.  
It was distracting and demanded to be felt, unlike the sickening numbness that he was too familiar with, hollow and dark, devouring him from inside out, leaving only a withering shell in its wake. 

Vacant eyes that would have lost their glint if there ever had been one to begin with.

When the storm raging inside him had become too much, when the voices inside his head had began to scream too loudly, he had to find a way to push it all down, to quieten every single awful buzzing that stirred restlessly beneath his skin. He had learned to shove every single fucking thing into the deepest depths of himself so it could keep tearing him apart from inside. But he wouldn't -couldn't- let it show. 

The apathy on his face was a reminder of how badly he had wanted to kill every ugly thing inside him. The apathy on his face told others:  
'I don't feel anything.'  
Because feeling was weakness. And he wouldn't be weak. He wouldn't let anything get to him again. 

It had almost killed him the last time.

He couldn't explain to himself why he still struggled to keep himself alive. He should've - perhaps already had - broken a very long time ago.

But still he kept standing.

Kept on walking, looking for something, anything, that could distract him from a while, keep his demons at bay. 

Sometimes he kept walking without being aware of it.  
His body subconsciously refused to give up after all it had been put through. He was still here, still alive, and quitting now would mean he didn't have the strength to go on anymore.  
He couldn't admit to weakness.  
So he kept walking.  
Aimlessly. Dully. 

After such a long time of this, he had come to terms with the undeniable sadness of his being and he had stopped searching for a spark to ignite something inside of him.  
Something that could shout over the defeaning noise inside his head.  
But reignition meant feeling. Feeling meant weakness.

Andrew felt like a broken wind-up doll repeating the same thing over and over: feeling was weakness feeling was weakness feeling was weakness.

He was so fucking sick of it. But he couldn't let go of the mechanism that allowed him to keep moving. He would've laughed at himself would he still remember what laughing felt like. 

Thanks to his eidetic memory he could remember his childhood all too well.  
Springing from one foster-home to the next, learning pretty soon he wasn't wanted anywhere.  
Joy was an unfamiliar concept to him. 

Cass though, Cass had made him doubt that maybe he could feel joy after all. She had even made him laugh a couple of times. She had smiled so warmly at him that sometimes he had tried to smile back.

For the first time in his life he had felt wanted. 

When the ugliness had reared its head not long after his first couple of weeks with the Spears he had tried so hard to ignore it. To endure it. To be stronger for Cass. 

Andrew had stopped hoping that his next foster-homes wouldn't put him under such humiliating abuse a long time ago.  
When Drake hadn't approached him in the first weeks of his stay he had felt cautiously optimistic.  
Maybe for once he would learn what it was like to have a caring older brother.

Oh how terribly wrong he had been.

How could he have expected anything else when he so vividly remembered all his former older foster-brothers taking advantage of him.  
He had felt so dirty and ashamed. They were all stronger than he was and his attempts to fight back had all shattered hopelessly.  
But he refused to let go of Cass.  
Refused to let go of the first good thing that had happened to him.

Just a bit longer.

Just a bit longer.

Time had become a monstrously concept bent on mocking him.

If he had survived his former abusers he could survive this one as well.  
But he had moved on pretty quickly to the next home when things had began to turn badly.  
There he hadn't had any attachments, though. 

For Cass he was willing to endure. He ached with the need to stay and run at the same time.

He developed fantasies of slitting Drake's throat that sometimes gave him peace of mind, but he couldn't harm him because Andrew knew how much Cass loved her son.  
How oblivious she was.  
Was she seriously so blind to the ugliness inside of him or did she just turn a blind eye, refusing to taint the beautiful picture she had painted of her son.

Sometimes Andrew wanted to scream at her. Scream his lungs out until his throat hurt and accuse her of not stopping her own son from doing this to him.  
Subconsciously he kept protecting her.  
She couldn't be aware of what was happening under her roof. She wouldn't let her son stay if she knew what he was doing to Andrew. 

She didn't know.  
She didn't know.  
She didn't know.

He couldn't move on from this home though so the abuse continued.  
Andrew slipped away further from himself time and time again and he told himself it was worth it.

He just had to hold on a little bit longer.

But how long was a little bit longer?  
How long would it take to make this all stop?  
How long until his body and mind refused to keep going?

Control slipped between his fingers.  
His body didn't belong to him anymore. Hadn't had for a long time already.

The self-hatred and disgust became too much to bear.

He furiously scrubbed at his skin in the shower until it was of an angry red.  
He wanted to get rid of all the ugliness clinging to his skin but it had seeped too deep already for him to be able to scrub it off. 

He kept at it until he began bleeding in some spots. He raked blunt nails across his skin over and over again, watching pale red lines bloom all over his forearms. 

The paleness of the red wasn't enough.  
He grabbed the razor without thinking and slit it across his skin and stark pure red welled up in an instant, sliding across his arms and mixing with the water until it looked like splashed crimson ink.

The sting was so welcome he almost couldn't bear it.  
His whole focus was on the pain on his forearm and the red colour of his blood, for just one moment the ugliness inside his head didn't have any room for contaminating his mind.

It was such a huge relief, that he couldn't seem to stop himself afterwards.

He kept at it until the pain had quieted everything inside of him.

All he felt was pain.

A pain he had done to himself.  
A pain nobody had forced upon him. 

He cut the water off and wondered how long he had lingered there under the spray, numbing his thoughts with pain.

Drying off was an obstacle because he wasn't stupid enough to let the towel touch his bloodied forearms.  
Cass would see the blood and ask him what had happened.  
So he dried of all his other body parts and ripped off some pieces of toilet paper to wipe across his arms.  
The wounds were still too fresh to cover with cloth so he sat down on the cold tile floor and let the blood air-dry until the bright red lines had faded into dark-red almost black crust. 

Suddenly he felt unbelievably exhausted.  
He put on the long-sleeved shirt he had taken to the bathroom and exited the bathroom to walk to his bedroom.  
As soon as his head hit the pillow he fell into a deep sleep, for once untroubled by nightmares.

 

But the nightmares never stayed away for long.


End file.
